Even the smoothest operator can get tongue-tied and ruin a romantic moment. Thankfully, those who created the sweet nothings didn’t have to speak, rather just write them down.
We’ve gathered some of the loveliest lines from the best love poems of all time. It might be a good idea to peruse through them and freshen your “how you doin’?” arsenal—wedding season and hot summer nights are around the corner. Plus, everyone knows quoting poetry is sexy.
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.”
—”How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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“I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved”
—”The Good-Morrow,” by John Donne
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“Who said that love was fire?
I know that love is ash.
It is the thing which remains
When the fire is spent.
The holy essence of experience.”
—”Who Said That Love Was Fire?” by Patience Worth
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“She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of Cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
meet in her aspect and her eyes.”
—”She Walks in Beauty,” by Lord Byron
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“i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me if your doing, my darling)”
—”i carry your heart with me,” by e.e. cummings
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“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times . . .
In life after life, in age after age, forever.”
—”Unending Love,” by Rabindranath Tagore
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“That I did always love
I bring thee proof
That till I loved
I never lived.”
—”That I Did Always Love,” by Emily Dickinson
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“You were born together, and together you shall be forever more.
You shall be together when the white sings of death scatter your days.”
—”Love One Another,” by Khalil Gibran
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“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken”
—”Sonnet 116,” by William Shakespeare
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“Then seek not, sweet, the ‘If’ and ‘Why’
I love you now until I die.
For I must love because I love
And life in me is what you give.”
—”Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her,” by Christopher Brennan